Practice challenges at the intersection of child protection and mental health

Abstract

This paper examines the complexity of collaboration between child protection and mental health services, where a parent has a mental illness and there are protection concerns for children. The paper reports on data from focused in‐depth interviews with 36 child protection workers, adult mental health workers and child and youth mental health workers. Data were analysed thematically, using NVivo to facilitate data management and analysis. Two dimensions were identified. The first, the process of collaboration, relates to four factors that assisted the collaborative process: communication, knowledge, role clarity and resources. The second dimension considers the challenges presented to collaborative work when a parent has a mental illness and a child is in need of protection, and identifies issues that are inherent in cases of this kind. Two types of challenge were identified. The first related to characteristics of mental illness, and included the episodic and/or unpredictable nature of mental illness, incorporating information from psychiatric and parenting capacity assessments, and the provision of ongoing support. The second type of challenge concerned the tension between the conflicting needs of parents and their children, and how this was viewed from both the adult mental health and the child protection perspective. Implications for policy and practice are identified in relation to the need for service models that provide ongoing, flexible support that can be intensified or held back as needed.

Clients’ and Professionals’ Experiences of Traversing Mental Health and Child Protection Systems: Implications for Practice

“…The interviews with professionals focused on detailed exploration of one case involving both mental health and child protection issues (see Darlington et al, 2005b). The 4 parent interviews were with the parent whose case had been discussed in the interview with one of their workers and focused on the parent's experiences of service provision from both mental health and child protection services.…”

“…The Interagency Collaboration in Child Protection and Mental Health Project was a mixed-method study of collaboration between child protection and mental health workers in cases where a parent had a mental illness and there were protection concerns for a child in the family (see Darlington et al, 2004Darlington et al, , 2005aDarlington et al, , 2005b. The project was conducted in Queensland, Australia, where child protection and adult mental health are the responsibility of separate state government departments.…”

Exploring Juridification in the Norwegian Barnahus Model

“…We know that good communication and a clear understanding of professional roles and responsibilities are important prerequisites, as well as mutual trust and an understanding of each other's duties and responsibilities (Darlington et al 2004). Formal agreements regulating collaboration are also important, in addition to having enough resources in terms of time and financing to be able to collaborate successfully (Darlington et al 2005;Katz and Hetherington 2006).…”

“…Conflicting professional aims and mandates cause tensions and challenges (Darlington et al 2005). In the Barnahus context, it is especially the tension between the criminal case and a need to ensure the child's well-being and psychological treatment that represents a challenge.…”

Collaborative practice in statutory in child protection practice: Parental agreements and procedural justice

“…The literature indicates that inter-agency practice is inherently fraught with challenges, as it requires trust (Darlington & Feeney, 2008;Horwath & T.Morrison, 2007;Jones, Crook, Reid, & Webb, 2008); effective communication (Darlington, Feeney & Rixon, 2005; B. Head, 2008;Spath, Werrbach, & Pine, 2008); the development of shared understandings and goals (Horwath & T.Morrison, 2007); strong and competent leadership (Jones et al, 2008); and adequate resource allocation (Metcalfe, Riedlinger, McKenzie, & Cook, 2007).…”